MSD Student Who Narrowly Survived Shooting Speaks

Samantha Grady was inches away when her best friend, Helena Ramsey, was struck by gunfire and died. A year later, she's still healing. NBC 6's Ari Odzer has the story.

(Published Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019)

The Grady family is proof that life, like any sport you choose, is a game of inches.

"I am definitely blessed, as I would say. I mean, just where I was in the classroom, where everything was pertaining to me, I shouldn't really be here, sitting and talking," said Samantha Grady, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Grady recalled being in her Holocaust history class when the shooting began. Unfamiliar with the sound of gunfire, Grady told NBC 6 she remained seated while trying to process what she was hearing.

"I was completely in denial [about Helena's death]," Grady said. "At one point I just looked, like 'Oh, you're playing a joke on me, that's good, playing dead, that's a great thing, you play dead and afterwards we'll just get out and laugh about this.' I was just completely in denial," Grady said.

The truth was and always will be overwhelming for the teen survivor: Her closest confidante is gone and Grady narrowly escaped death.

"What bothers me to this day, what if, what if, we're talking inches, she was only about four or five inches away from her best friend who was killed," said Grady's father, Jim Grady.

Her mother, Sally Grady, said she breaks down crying whenever she thinks of her daughter's late friend and her grieving mother. "If I can feel like this, I can just imagine how her mother feels right now," she added.

"It makes me think how fortunate I am to be here, but at the same time how horrible of an act this really, truly was, and how kind of angry I am that they're not here anymore," Grady said.

Grady still carries bullet fragments in her chest, and survivor's guilt in her heart.